


Peace To Your Wounds

by lunasenzanotte



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Writing & Publishing, BDSM, Bondage, Books, Dominance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Futbal Mini-Bang, Masochism, Masturbation, Semi-Public Sex, Spain, Spanish National Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 04:44:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4733204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunasenzanotte/pseuds/lunasenzanotte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Villa can always sniff the next bestseller - like the manuscript that that could send 50 Shades of Grey into the dark abyss of oblivion. When the author appears in his office, Villa almost falls under his table, because there is no way a creature as innocent as David Silva could have written something like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peace To Your Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my awesome, talented artist souzou, and also to the amazing guzmanasol for beta-ing my work.

 

“I have something that will interest you.”  
  
Frank Lampard always calls in the most inappropriate moments. Like when Villa is just about to take a shower, and it’s not like Frank can see him, but he feels slightly awkward discussing business while naked.  
  
“Really?” he asks in the most unimpressed voice, hoping to put Frank off.  
  
He knows that he failed when Frank continues in his ecstatic voice like Villa didn’t say anything. “I got this amazing manuscript, and I think it will be a bomb. It’s like... Fifty Shades of Grey, minus the terrible writing and idiotic characters, plus actual plot and psychological depth. Oh, and it’s two guys.”  
  
Villa gives up, wraps a towel around his waist and sits on the edge of the bathtub. If there is someone in the world that was born for the job of a literary agent, it’s Frank Lampard. If he likes a manuscript, he’s ready to stuff it down the publisher’s throat until they agree to sign a contract with the author. In other words, he’s every author’s dream and every publisher’s nightmare. “Who wrote it? Someone we know?” he asks.  
  
“No, actually it’s his first work. The guy is Spanish.”  
  
“Why does he want to publish it here, then?”  
  
“Because gay novels are the thing here now, with all that ‘love wins’ hype...” Frank babbles. “While in Spain, it probably wouldn’t get enough attention.”  
  
Villa sighs. “I swear, Lampard, if it’s another  _Stallion_...”  
  
Frank actually has the audacity to chuckle.  _The fucker._  “All right, all right, I admit, the  _Stallion_  was a mistake and I deserve to burn in Hell eternally for it. But this is different. I swear. You have to read it.”  
  
Villa is skeptical. After Frank brought in this manuscript called  _Stallion_ , written by some Zlatan Ibrahimović, and claimed it would be a hit, Villa made the biggest mistake of his life. He didn’t bother to read it. When he actually did, it was too late. And for the next year and a half, their publishing house was the butt of many jokes. Villa wanted to dig himself a nice deep hole and hide in there any time some girls on the subway quoted that damned book and laughed hysterically.  
  
“Why should I read it, though? Isn’t that Andoni’s job?” he asks then, to piss off Frank even more, and because it indeed  _is_  Andoni’s work to read the books Frank brings in – just to make sure nothing written by Ibrahimović, not even under a pseudonym, crosses the threshold of the building ever again.  
  
“Oh, but I gave it to Andoni already.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“After about three pages, he threw it in the corner and ran off to church. He might still be in the confessional as we speak.”  
  
“So you figured out that I would be more qualified to read that thing because unlike Andoni, I’m a pervert?”  
  
“You said that yourself,” Frank says in a sugar-sweet voice. “So can I send it to you?”  
  
“I’ll read the first three chapters,” Villa says resolutely.  
  
“You take that three chapters rule too seriously,” Frank sighs. “Tell me, why a person like you that hates reading above everything else owns a publishing house as renowned as NYC Publishers?”  
  
“Because I inherited it!” Villa barks. “Send me that damn thing before I change my mind.”  
  
He puts down the phone and steps in the shower. And he had hoped for a nice boring evening.  
  


* * *

  
The manuscript arrives barely an hour later by messenger, in an envelope sealed and stamped like it comes at least from the Pentagon. Villa throws it on the table right next to the box with unfinished pizza. It’s not like he has anything better to do, but he needs to at least pretend that Frank isn’t bossing him around.  
  
He takes pity of that manuscript only when he settles in his bed, after he checks that there is nothing on TV that would interest him more than some gay romance. The first page is crumpled, probably victim of Andoni’s fit. With a sigh, he gets to reading.  
  
He gets through the first chapter surprisingly quickly. It’s not as bad as he had thought it would be. There is not a ton of crap and backstory that some authors like to suffocate the readers with in the first chapters. This gets straight to the point – two guys meet. The first one, Javier, is apparently pretty much confused about his sexuality, because as if being gay wasn’t confusing enough for a guy his age, he is also into pain and several other kinks, which is bound to scare off most of his potential partners. Luckily, one day he meets Fernando – who isn’t confused about his sexuality at all and has enough experience with all that Javier wants and needs. It is so perfect that Villa wonders what the hell the author wrote another three hundred pages about.  
  
He gets the answer on the next page. Probably about sex.  
  
 _Fernando took an ice-cube out of the champagne cooler._  
  
Whoever the author is, Villa has to give him credit for not trying to impress with unnecessary details. If this was the Fifty Shades of Grey, he is sure that the champagne cooler would be at least some Veuve Clicquot vintage piece and the poor guy on the receiving end of the luxurious treatment would think about how awesome that was until his dick would go soft and that would be the end of the scene. Villa chuckles at the thought.  
  
 _He brought it to Javier’s lips and let him suck on it briefly before running it down his neck, encircling his nipples and letting it slide down to his navel. Then he took the cube and pressed it to his hole. Javier jerked instinctively, tugging at the ropes as Fernando worked the half-melted cube inside him. A slap on his backside was enough to calm him down momentarily. Fernando reached for two more cubes and pushed them inside one after the other. And then he dipped his head and took Javier in his mouth._  
  
Villa swallows hard.  _What the hell is this?_  He imagines Andoni reading this page and wonders if he should apologize to him personally or publicly.  
  
 _Javier was shaking, trapped between the heat of Fernando's mouth and the coldness of ice slowly melting inside him, the drops of water trickling down his thighs._  
  
It takes him another three paragraphs filled with oral sex to realize that his hand has somehow crept under the covers and into his pants.  _Fuck. Get a grip. These are words. Just words. Written on a piece of paper._  
  
 _Then he reached for the blindfold and took it off. Javier’s eyes were manic even as he blinked in the dimmed light. Fernando grinned. “You can come now,” he said._  
  
Villa does.  
  


* * *

  
Of course, Frank appears only minutes after Villa switches on his computer and gets his first cup of coffee.  
  
“So?” Frank asks instead of wishing Villa good morning, and he folds his arms.  
  
Villa looks at him with his most unimpressed face because he simply cannot give Frank the satisfaction. “Well, I give it bonus points for not using fifty weird terms for penis.”  
  
“Great,” Frank says and sits in the leather armchair opposite to Villa. He’s all business now. “And on the more serious note?”  
  
Villa stops pretending that he works on something. After all, he’s a publisher. He needs to publish books, even if he hates them. “It’s good,” he says. “I mean, it can be a bestseller, as well as a total fiasco.”  
  
“Isn’t it like that with every book?” Frank shrugs.  
  
“You said the author never wrote anything before?”  
  
“Nope. Not even short stories or anything. Impressive, huh?”  
  
Villa folds his arms. “I want to meet him.”  
  
Frank looks surprised. “Why?”  
  
“Because if I had met Ibrahimović before I published  _Stallion_ , I would have never allowed that book to leave this building. I’d bury it somewhere deep.”  
  
“Fine. Fine,” Frank nods. “But if you drag this guy here all the way from Spain just to send him to hell, it’s the last time you hear from me, Villa.”  
  
“I’m not sure if it wouldn’t be actually a blessing,” Villa says. “And now I really have to prepare for the meeting or else we will have no publishing plan for next year.” He turns to the screen of his computer and stirs his coffee.  
  
“You read three chapters only, really?” Frank asks, already halfway out of Villa’s office.  
  
“As I said.”  
  
“You should really read chapter four.”  
  
“What is in chapter four?” Villa asks exasperatedly, trying to browse his e-mails quickly while drinking as much coffee as possible before he has to run to the meeting.  
  
“The scene where Fernando flogs Javier in front of full-length mirrors, for example,” Frank says matter-of-factly.  
  
Villa spills his coffee on the keyboard. “Fuck you, Frank!” he says, fumbling with the paper tissue dispenser to clean the worst mess. “I officially ban you from discussing that damned thing with me when I’m about to do something important.”  
  
Frank chuckles and walks out, leaving Villa with a flooded keyboard and a very disturbing image in his head.  
  


* * *

  
Against his better judgment, Villa reads chapter four. And chapters five and six.  
  
The story gets stuck in his mind and he realizes it when he actually zones out during a meeting with the inters, getting out of the strange trance only when he hears them giggling while looking at him. He quickly shakes his head to get the image of a man pouring hot wax on another man’s body and tries to continue the meeting, but the interns keep giving him knowing looks, so he wraps it up quickly.  
  
On the way to his office, he sees Andoni surrounded by the graphic artists, discussing which picture of a cartoon dinosaur should be on the cover of some children’s book. He looks so happy waving a print of a green smiling creature that Villa makes a mental note to never expose him to erotica again.  
  
He almost runs in the room, ignoring his secretary who is trying to tell him something. He throws his jacket on the nearest chair and looks out of the window at the rainy panorama of New York City. Then he turns back and almost screams. There is a man sitting on the leather sofa next to the door, watching him somehow curiously.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Villa barks.  
  
“I’m David Silva,” the man says and gets up. “I wrote that thing on your desk. With the crumpled first page.”  
  
Villa’s eyes go wide. Not because this is not the way people usually speak to him. But because the man he is looking at and the manuscript on his table simply don’t go together. Silva looks like the kind of guy that only makes love with the lights off and blushes whenever someone makes a racy joke in his presence. He just cannot accept that this guy wrote the naughtiest thing he’s ever read.  
  
“Oh,” he says finally. “David Villa. Nice to meet you.”  
  
He really tries to make it sound genuine, but Silva still looks borderline offended. Villa offers him a seat and sits in his chair. He’s so used to nervous looking nerds with glasses or shy women that feel uncomfortable discussing their novels with him, that this confident young man unnerves him.  
  
“So... what did you think about it?” Silva asks, pointing to the manuscript.  
  
Villa gulps. What is he supposed to say now?  _It was so good that I wanked to it?_  
  
“To be honest, I didn’t read it whole,” he says.  _Not sounding very professional._  “Well, I’m in the process of reading it.”  _Sounding even less professional._  
  
“I understand,” Silva says bluntly, his eyes not quite leaving Villa’s. “And what did you think about what you’ve read so far?”  
  
“I like it,” Villa replies, feeling the truth liberating him. “But if I’m to be really honest...”  
  
“Aren’t you always really honest?” Silva raises his brows.  
  
Villa just stares at him. “Well, I...” he stumbles over his words. “I’ve encountered some things that I didn’t really get... I mean, that made me a bit doubtful. If I’m to publish your book - and trust me that I’m really interested in doing so – we need to clarify those.”  
  
“I have no problems with that.”  
  
Villa is quite sure that he doesn’t. While Villa could have quite a few.  
  
“I suppose you are staying at a hotel,” he says. “If you’d leave me your number so that we could arrange a meeting... I wouldn’t want you to have to come here every time if it’s too far away...”  
  
He can’t believe his ears. He is arranging a meeting elsewhere. He doesn’t know what possessed him. But it’s not like his brain has been functioning properly lately.  
  
Silva produces a card with the name and number of his hotel and lays it on Villa’s table. “Treat it better than the manuscript,” he says and walks out of the office.  
  
Villa stares at the door even when he is long gone.  _Damn._  
  


* * *

  
Frank pokes his head inside Villa’s office right when he’s packing his things. “So what about our Spanish genius?” he asks.  
  
“I’m meeting him in about an hour,” Villa says. “Which means I gotta go.”  
  
“He doesn’t look like it, eh?” Frank says, giving Villa a naughty smile.  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“Like someone who’s into that kind of stuff,” Frank states. “It makes you wonder how much of it is his personal experience. If all of that is true, actually, he’s a fucking sex god.”  
  
Villa groans internally, grabs his jacket and the manuscript and runs out of the office. He curses Frank in his mind. Now his mind is definitely not set on business talk.  
  


* * *

  
The Starbucks on Park Avenue is busy as always at this hour. Silva is sitting alone at one table, typing on his laptop, entirely submerged in his own world. In the deepest corner of his mind, Villa hopes to God that he is not writing a sequel.  
  
“I’ll just order,” he says after they shake hands. “Can I get you anything?”  
  
“Vanilla latte, please,” Silva smiles. “With soy milk.”  
  
Standing in the queue, Villa imagines this guy sitting in a Starbucks in Valencia, sipping on his soy milk vanilla latte and typing the words of utter naughtiness on his beaten-up laptop while surrounded by a bunch of unsuspecting students and businessmen.  
  
The image is really disturbing.  
  
When he gets back to the table, Silva closes his laptop and looks at him like an excited student. Villa understands that he is supposed to be giving the lecture here, and he isn’t sure that he is ready for it.  
  
“There are things that I’m not sure can stay in the book,” he says finally. “For example, I don’t think that we can publish something that makes a rape look okay.”  
  
Silva looks almost childishly cute when he wrinkles his nose, furrows his brows and looks at Villa defiantly from underneath his dark fringe. “Where exactly did I write rape?”  
  
Villa wishes he used bookmarks or at least post-it notes, because fumbling with the papers makes him feel even more awkward than this whole conversation already has. Finally he finds the right page and shows it to Silva triumphantly.  
  
 _The voices and music from the hall were muffled here, and Javier took a deep breath. The night air smelled of smoke and something sweet that he couldn’t identify. He leaned over the balustrade, looking down at the road. When the balcony door screeched, he turned his head. Fernando was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. His tie was a little askew, Javier noticed.  
  
“Not enjoying the party?” Fernando asked.  
  
Javier smiled apologetically. He knew that the business soirées were important for Fernando, but he didn’t really know anyone there, and when Fernando went to make his usual round, he could just hang around with his glass of champagne, hoping for someone to take pity on him and start talking to him about the paintings on the wall or the food. “It’s a bit overwhelming,” he said. “And loud.”  
  
Fernando smiled and closed the door, cutting the voices off. Javier turned back to the scene in front of him, watching the lights of the Ferris wheel in the park. Fernando walked up to him slowly.  
  
“What are you doing?” Javier asked anxiously when Fernando started unzipping his pants.  
  
“Shut up. Put your hands on the balustrade and keep them there.”  
  
Javier obeyed, putting his hands on the cold stone, but when Fernando pulled his pants down, just enough to expose his ass and free his cock, his hands moved to stop him. “Stop... I can’t do this,” he whispered. “Not here.”  
  
Fernando’s voice was steady and calm, the way Javier knew it from the bedroom when Fernando was pushing his limits. “You can.”  
  
“No, please. Please...” he took a sharp breath. “Sir. I’ll do anything...”  
  
Nothing moved in Fernando’s face. He grabbed Javier’s wrists and placed his hands back on the balustrade. He unbuckled his own pants and spat in his palm. “Spread your legs.”  
  
Javier shivered, but he spread his legs hesitantly. “You will keep your hands where they are. You will not touch yourself. You will not look at me. Do you understand?” Fernando asked, grabbing a handful of Javier’s hair and tugging on it when the answer didn’t come quickly enough. “Do you understand?”  
  
“Y-yes.” His body jolted when a hand fell hard on his right cheek. “Sir. Yes, sir.”  
  
Javier bit his lip when Fernando entered him. It hurt more than usually, Fernando's spit being the only lubricant. He felt like he was suffocating, despite the open space around him. Or maybe because of it. He just hoped for Fernando to get off quickly, to allow him to cover himself up again, to leave.  
  
When Fernando's hand wrapped around his cock, working him to hardness, he understood that it wasn’t entirely about Fernando's pleasure. “No, please, stop, I...” he sobbed.  
  
Fernando's arm curled around his waist, pressing him even closer. He stilled and for a moment, there was only the distant buzzing of traffic and Javier’s gasps. “Do you know why I’m doing it?” Fernando whispered in his ear.  
  
“N-no. Sir.”  
  
“So that you know...” Fernando said, ignoring Javier’s mewling when he started moving inside him again. “That you belong to me. Whenever I want, wherever I want. You. Are. Mine.” With each word, he thrusted in Javier roughly, hitting his spot infallibly. He gave him the mercy of clamping a hand over his mouth when he came.  
  
Javier slumped against his lover when Fernando pulled out of him. Fernando lowered him down, maneuvering him on his knees, allowing him only enough time to catch his breath again. “Be a good boy now,” he said and pumped his cock a few times before feeding it to Javier. “We need to go back downstairs.”_  
  
“I’m afraid that you skipped chapter three, Mr. Villa,” Silva smiles calmly and finishes his drink. “They establish a safeword there. No doesn’t mean no, the  _safeword_  means no. That’s how it works, and it’s basic knowledge.”  
  
Villa wants to say that he is perfectly fine without any knowledge about this kind of stuff, but he bites his tongue in time. “Fine,” he mumbles.  
  
“Any other concerns I can help you with?”  
  
For some reason, Villa feels like strangling this guy.  
  
“You seem to only be obsessed with the sex,” Silva says and folds his arms. “But it’s not the first plan at all.”  
  
“I’m  _concerned_  about the sex because that’s what I have to be concerned about before I publish the book. Unfortunately, the Americans are prudes in certain aspects.”  
  
“I know. I just wanted to make sure that you don’t regard the book as porn. Because it sounds like that whenever you start speaking about it.”  
  
“There’s enough sex in there to call it porn.”  
  
“Not nearly enough.”  
  
Villa gasps. Suddenly he realizes that Silva is leaning over the small, low table, that he is practically  _in his face_ , like he wants to either punch him or kiss him. Before he can say anything, Silva leans back in the worn armchair and looks at him calmly, the authority leaving his eyes as quickly as it appeared there. “You don’t do much reading, do you?” he asks in a conversational tone.  
  
“Not really,” Villa says. “Do you?”  
  
“Yes. I work in a bookshop in Valencia. There’s plenty of material, and plenty of time to read.”  
  
“So writing... novels... isn’t your full-time job?”  
  
“No,” Silva chuckles. “Is it anyone’s full-time job?”  
  
“Well, there are such people. Maybe you’ll become one of them when this becomes a bestseller.”  
  
Silva laughs shortly. It sounds more like a bark. “Yeah. Right.”  
  
“You don’t believe in your writing?” Villa raises his brows.  
  
“I don’t believe in the readers,” Silva smiles. “But maybe I’ll be surprised.”  
  


* * *

  
Villa doesn’t see Silva for almost a week, which he spends trying to read as much of the book as possible, being aroused by it as little as possible, and not killing Frank Lampard in the process.  
  
When they meet again, it’s in a cozy little restaurant, much more into the evening than Villa would normally arrange a meeting, but the atmosphere and the wine at least make it easier to loosen up and discuss the book like a normal person, not a bigot, would.  
  
“The book is supposed to show how these relationships can turn into something unhealthy if they spread out of the bedroom into everyday life. And how hard it is to get out,” Silva explains halfway through the second bottle of wine. “It’s not meant to glorify abuse like some books do. If you read something like the Fifty shades of Grey and you know at least a little bit about BDSM, you just have to cringe.”  
  
“I agree with you on that.”  
  
“You know, some people say that BDSM is a form of art. I think it’s much more than that. If you do art badly, it’s not such a big deal. If you paint a bad picture or write a bad novel, people can always throw it in the trashcan and nobody gets hurt. But by doing BDSM badly, you can actually damage a person. It’s a responsibility that not everyone can handle.”  
  
“You could, though?”  
  
Silva lays the glass on the table and looks at Villa with a sparkle in his eyes. “Why do you think that I am Fernando?” he asks.  
  
Villa can feel the tips of his ears turn red. “I-I don’t...”  
  
“You do. And you have. All the time,” Silva states. “You keep looking at me, wondering how a guy that looks like this can be a monster like him. Because that’s what you do all the time. Misread. Both people and literary characters. How you can own a publishing house like this is beyond me.” He almost jumps up, then pauses and lays a hand on his forehead, waiting for the world to stop spinning. He grabs his jacket and heads to the door.  
  
“What are you doing?” Villa calls.  
  
“Leaving,” Silva says. “I think we had all the talks we needed to have.”  
  
“But the contract...”  
  
“I made up my mind. I’m not going to sign that contract. And you know why? Because I didn’t only put effort into writing that book, I poured my very soul into it. It’s not just a stack of junk paper, and it won’t be treated like one.”  
  
“But...”  
  
“I can’t believe that I risked my job and spent all my money on this,” Silva shakes his head, throws a few banknotes on the table and runs out of the restaurant.  
  
Villa doesn’t even have the strength to finish the wine.  
  


* * *

  
“Are you completely mad?” Frank yells, slamming the paper cup with his coffee in the table so hard that the brown liquid splashes all over the book cover samples. Villa hopes that Andoni will kill Frank quickly and painlessly. “How could you let him go? Well, fuck him, but how could you let  _that book_  go?”  
  
“I told you, he had different expectations...”  
  
“What if he takes it elsewhere? Fuck, if he takes that thing to Gerrard, we’re fucked...” Frank laments, searching his pockets frantically.  
  
“What are you doing?” Villa asks.  
  
“Looking for my phone,” Frank says, pulling said phone out, fumbling with it. “I’m going to call the airport, maybe they can tell me if he booked the ticket to L.A. already...”  
  
“Calm down, Frank,” Villa says and takes the phone from him. “He’s not going to L.A.”  
  
“How do you know?”  
  
“I know, okay. He’s not going anywhere. Well, he’s going home.”  
  
Frank doesn’t really calm down, but at least he stops looking up the airport phone number. “And now? What are you going to do?”  
  
“Nothing,” Villa spreads his arms. “I’m going to meet the guys from the PR section, and then I’ll have lunch. Just another day in the office.”  
  
He starts down the corridor before Frank can utter a word. He’s already turning the corner when Andoni’s voice gets to his ears. “Frank? What happened to the dinosaurs?”  
  


* * *

  
Villa switches on the light and throws his jacket on the floor.  _One of the advantages of living alone_ , he muses. He stands in the living room for a moment, just looking at the city lights. He’s been living here long enough to get used to the sight, but not enough to stop missing the warmer, friendlier Spanish landscapes. His mind flies back to Silva and he runs a hand through his hair. He keeps replaying their argument in his head, now completed with Frank’s words.  
  
He probably missed a chance to make a lot of money. He knows it, acknowledges it, he can even admit that it was his mistake. But it’s not the reason of disquietude that he’s feeling. He feels like he’s done some harm to Silva personally, and he doesn’t know how.  
  
Then his eyes fall on the manuscript still sitting on the top of his desk. He pulls the stack of papers to him, sits on the sofa and flips through the pages until he gets almost to the end.  
  
 _Javier walked in the living room. Fernando was there, but he wasn’t alone. A woman was sitting on the sofa, legs crossed elegantly, revealing the lace band of her stockings. Her full blonde hair was falling on her back in waves and her red lips gave Javier the perfect smile as he approached them.  
  
All kinds of scenarios ran through his mind. Including the one in which Fernando wasn’t really gay, or discovered that he wasn’t, with this blonde, and now he was leaving Javier for her. Except that Fernando didn’t look like anyone who is about to leave his lover.  
  
“Finally you are home, love. This is Ana,” he said with a smile. “Ana, Javier.”  
  
Ana held out her hand. She looked confident and so at ease in their living room. Javier didn’t know why it annoyed him so much, but it did.  
  
“I want to try something special tonight,” Fernando said when he practically sat Javier down on the sofa next to the woman and poured him a glass of wine.  
  
“What?” Javier asked warily.  
  
Fernando leaned closer to him, ignoring Ana’s presence momentarily. “I want you to fuck her,” he said. “While I’m fucking you.”_  
  
Villa takes a sharp breath.  
  
 _“I... I don’t think that I can... that I want...” Javier stammered  
  
“It’s not an offer,” Fernando said calmly. “It’s an order.”  
  
Javier looked at him, eyes pleading, but Fernando was adamant. “You want me to... fuck her,” he repeated half-heartedly.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“While you’re...”  
  
“I want you to do what I say,” Fernando said, taking the glass from Javier because it was threatening to leave a red stain on the cream-colored carpet. “You will do to her what I ask you to do to her. And then I’ll fuck you. Or both of you.”  
  
Ana let out a short laugh that sounded disturbingly carefree, compared to how Javier was feeling.  
  
“You can do it for me, can’t you?”  
  
“I... I...” he tried, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t deny Fernando anything. He jumped up like he wanted to run out of the house, and he knew that it was what he should do, but his legs refused to obey him.  
  
“You will do it,” Fernando said and his voice was dangerous this time. “You will either say your safeword now, or you will do as I say.”_  
  
Villa feels like a truck has just hit him. This is the first plan Silva had been talking about all along. He doesn’t understand how he could miss it, how he could not read between the lines, how he could overlook the way Fernando started to control Javier’s life, his wants and needs, to the point that he couldn’t deny him anything. Then he realizes that he knows why he was as blind as Javier was. Because Silva wanted him to be. Because he hid it in the fine spiderweb of words so brilliantly that the reader could only realize it together with Javier.  
  
 _Ana took off her dress and black stockings, smiling lasciviously. She was beautiful, her body could fill the pages of all those magazines men fantasized over, but her beauty was actually what repulsed Javier.  
  
“Tell Javier your safeword, Ana,” Fernando ordered from the armchair in the corner of the room that had become his directorial chair.  
  
“Memphis,” Ana said, exaggerating the American accent on purpose.  
  
Javier glanced over to Fernando, but his face was unreadable. “Tie her up,” he said. “On her stomach. Make the ropes tight.”  
  
Javier moved slowly, his limbs felt heavy, but he did as Fernando said. Some part of him enjoyed the way Ana bit her lips as he tightened the ropes around her wrists. It was twisted, but he couldn’t help it. Fernando looked pleased with him and it made him feel proud. He took the black riding crop his lover handed him without protests. “Warm her up,” Fernando smiled, the smirk on his face emphasizing the meaning behind the words. Javier gripped the handle tight and brought the crop down._  
  
Villa has to get up and make a few rounds around the room before he can finish the chapter.  
  
 _Javier was panting heavily. The hot wetness of her felt strangely foreign while Fernando's cock in him felt comfortingly familiar. Nothing hurt, Fernando made sure to prepare him and use enough lube, because this time Javier wasn’t meant to be feeling the pain. He was meant to be the one inflicting it.  
  
“Continue,” Fernando breathed in his ear, taking him by the wrist and lifting his hand, reminding him that he was still holding the crop. “With all your might.”  
  
He did continue, not with all his might, but with all his hatred, not for the woman but for Fernando, and maybe himself. The blood rushing through his veins almost deafened him, almost made him overhear the word. _Memphis.  
  
 _She kept screaming even after he had stopped hitting her._

 

 

It takes Villa quite some effort to find the bookshop Silva works in, as it’s hidden in one of the alleys in the center of the city. It’s one of those old-fashioned, shabby bookshops that smell of paper and ink and don’t even take credit cards. Villa considers going in, but the place is really small and quiet and he doesn’t feel comfortable having that kind of talk in such place.  
  
He hangs around, waiting for the closing hour. At some point, he has a shot of something stronger in a bar nearby, just to give his courage a boost.  
  
Finally the clock strikes seven and Silva walks out. Villa takes a deep breath and walks out from his hiding place behind the corner. Silva stops, not really startled nor surprised. “What are you doing here?”  
  
Villa hands him the envelope containing his manuscript. Silva takes it without a word.  
  
“I understand now,” Villa says quietly. “You’re not Fernando.”  
  
“Took you a long time,” Silva mumbles and turns his back to Villa.  
  
Villa takes a deep breath and then another one. He musters the courage when Silva is almost too far away to hear him. “You are Javier.”  
  
Silva stops in his tracks. He stands still for a while before turning back. “I was,” he says quietly. “Not anymore.”  
  


* * *

  
“So was this supposed to be a revenge?” Villa asks when they are sitting by one of the pools in the City of Arts and Sciences. There are still people around but he doesn’t mind it anymore. “To that Fernando, if it was his real name?”  
  
“Maybe,” Silva smiles nostalgically. “Though now I think it was more of a therapy. I needed to put it to words so that I’d finally understand it myself.” He sips on his  _horchata_ like they are discussing something unimportant, playing with the straw, but when he looks at Villa again, his face is serious. “It was just my story at the beginning. But the more I worked on it, the more I edited and rewrote and re-read... it changed everything. I don’t see the real Fernando when I read those lines, and I don’t see myself in Javier anymore. Actually now when I think of Javier, I don’t see my face, I see a completely different one. They are just characters now. They have their own lives, own personalities. They are not us anymore. Probably because there simply is no us anymore.”  
  
“How much of it is true?” Villa asks, looking at Silva gravely.  
  
“Everything in the book is true.”  
  
“Even that with...”  
  
“Everything.”  
  
He wraps his arms around his own torso and suddenly he isn’t the confident man that could make Villa feel worthless with his snarky remarks. He looks small and somehow lost. “The next time I yelled the safeword when he barely touched me. I felt stupid about it afterwards, but in that moment, it was a question of life and death. I couldn’t stand his touch anymore, I felt like if I let him do it one more time, there would be no way back. He’d own me whole then, and suddenly I knew that it wasn’t what I wanted. I still wanted to belong to myself,” he says and looks at Villa. “Have you ever heard of the Story of O?”  
  
“I don’t think so.”  
  
“It’s a French novel, written long before these BDSM novels were a thing. The heroine willingly lets herself be trained as a slave to please her lover. Then her lover hands her over to his step-brother, and she falls in love with him. She wants to belong to him completely, she even allows herself to be branded with his initials.” He looks at the azure surface of the pool. “And there is an epilogue that was maybe never meant to be published. The lover eventually leaves her and O is so devastated that she asks for a permission to kill herself, and she is granted it. I knew that I didn’t want that,” he says and looks Villa right in the eyes. “I like to be held down, I like to be dominated, I like it rough, I like pain. But I also want it to stay in the bedroom. I’m not willing to lose my freedom. And it’s not easy to find someone who understands that.”  
  
“Have you heard about him since?” Villa asks. “Fernando?”  
  
“Yeah,” Silva nods. “Last time I heard about him, he was in Italy. Found himself another pet. A more pliant one, I’d say.”  
  
“Did you ever regret leaving him?”  
  
“I don’t know. The first few months were tough. I was so used to him deciding on everything, deciding what I would do in my free time, what I would eat and drink, what I would wear... I had to learn how to decide for myself. But now I’m happy. Happy to be free.”  
  
“But he still deserves to be in your book.”  
  
“I was really mad at you, you know,” Silva smiles. “At first I really wanted to take it somewhere else, to take revenge on you... I’m a very revengeful person, it seems.”  
  
“But you didn’t.”  
  
“No. Because I realized something.  _You_  helped me realize something.”  
  
“What was it?”  
  
“That if I publish this, people will do exactly what you did. They will judge. Not the book. Me. They’ll be like you, they’ll assume things about me. Most likely wrong things. I don’t think I can handle it.”  
  
“Then I have a solution,” Villa smiles.  
  
“Not to publish it.”  
  
“No,” Villa chuckles. “Publish it. And use a pen name. Then nobody will know it’s you. And you’ll get to watch people read your book on the subway and give them smug smiles. I think it’s something you’d love to do.”  
  
Silva laughs. “You’re getting better at reading people.”  
  


* * *

  
Silva’s apartment looks almost the same as the bookshop he works in. There are books everywhere, on the bookshelves, on the tables, even piled on the floor. The only place not covered in books is the bed.  
  
When Silva kisses him, Villa stumbles over one pile and makes it tumble to the floor. Silva doesn’t seem to be too upset about it, instead he concentrates on unbuttoning Villa’s shirt. Villa inhales sharply and stops him. “I... I’m not sure that I can give you... what you need.”  
  
Silva smiles condescendingly, running a finger down Villa’s chest playfully. “But I can do vanilla as well.”  
  
“But in the long term...”  
  
Silva starts laughing. “You speak like a businessman even in the bedroom,” he says. “Well, Mr. Villa, in the long term, I’m sure I can teach you a few things that perhaps won’t hurt you, while they will hurt me, very delightfully.”  
  
Villa’s jaw falls to the floor. “Fuck you,” he breathes out.  
  
“Yes,” Silva says in a husky voice. “That’s what you should do.”  
  
Villa swallows hard, his mind clouding momentarily. “Little bitch,” he growls, grabs the front of Silva’s shirt and throws him on the bed. When he comes to his senses, he is on the bed as well, straddling him.  
  
There is a mix of surprise and arousal in Silva’s eyes, while his lips are already curling up in a smile. “You will be a good student, it seems,” he says.  
  


* * *

  
“Maybe I should write another book,” Silva muses, his head on Villa’s chest. “About us two.”  
  
He lifts his head slightly and looks at Villa from underneath his fringe that is now sticking to his forehead. Villa sinks his hand in Silva’s hair and tugs just enough to make it hurt a little, pulling him up until their faces level up. “If you write a single word about me...” he says in a low voice. “I’ll tie you up, blindfold you, gag you, and then I’ll use that thing people of your sort call Florentine flogging. I looked it up on Wikipedia and I’m willing to learn it just for this purpose.”  
  
Silva’s eyes darken and his lips part as he drinks up Villa’s words. Then he cracks a smile.  
  
“I’ll get to writing in the morning,” he announces. 


End file.
